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This section was my workspace for philosophy essays between July 2006 and April 2008.
I call this "Prehistoric Kilroy" because it gave me practice for more
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Issue #63, 1/9/2007

Detecting Manipulators

By Glenn CampbellFamily Court Philosopher

Good and evil are not merely theoretical concepts. They are
systemic patterns of brain activity. Evil is a brain that
is at war with itself as is tries to cover up a
self-inflicted lie. Good is a brain in harmony with itself
because it has nothing to hide. Only the good brain is
capable of joy, empathy and true humor. The evil brain is
locked in isolation and perpetual torment as it frantically
tries to tie off all the loose ends of its public and
private deception.

As described in essay #38, Evil
Explained, evil is the condition of lying to yourself.
There is some fundamental inconsistency within you
that you are trying desperately to defend. For example,
you may be doing drugs while at the same time telling
yourself that you don't have a drug problem. The problem
isn't in you, you claim, but in the employer who fired you,
the spouse who left you, the relatives who refuse to give
you money or the caseworker who took away your kids. You may
acknowledge that you have done drugs, but you claim it is
something that you have under control and that hasn't hurt you.
"I am not an addict," you say.

This kind of inner inconsistency breeds outward aggression.
Attacking those people who seem to be putting you down
becomes a necessary substitute for any self-blame. To
preserve your fragile self-esteem, you project all
responsibility outward onto whatever convenient target is
available. When your case is weak and the blame doesn't
really fit the person or entity you are pinning it on, then
you beef up your position with anger and possibly violence.
This active aggression is necessary to propel the reproach
away from you and onto the other person.

Anger is an expression of frustration. It is what people
resort to when all other pathways have been blocked. It is
rarely a productive emotion in the outside world, but
internally it serves the immediate purpose of deflecting
responsibility away from oneself. The resulting aggression
is a form of self-medication, like taking an aspirin. While
you are beating up someone else, you aren't hurting inside.

Aggression comes in two different flavors: overt and
manipulative. Overt aggression is obvious: It is yelling,
complaining, punching, shooting, etc. Manipulative
aggression is more subtle. It is the quiet exploitation of
others to achieve ones aggressive goals. For example,
instead of punching your ex-wife, you can arrange to get her
fired from her job by making false complaints against her.
In the warped world of emotional logic, both actions divert
blame away from you and onto her.

The trouble with manipulative aggression, for us on the
outside, is that it is hard to detect. The aggressor always
has a logical sounding explanation for what he does, and
weak-minded people are easily persuaded by his sales pitch.
A manipulative wife, for example, can make false domestic
violence claims against her husband when he seems to be
withdrawing from her, and the police often fall for it. The
complaints may sound real and may be loosely based on real
incidents, but the inner purpose is to cause the other party
damage, not to seek protection.

Manipulators are a serious problem in divorce court.
Accompanied by a good lawyer, they can often control the
proceedings and make the other party seem like the
aggressor when in fact they were. They seek custody of the
kids and every marital assets possible, but they don't
really care about the kids or the assets; they just want to
inflict as much damage as possible on the other party. This
outward aggression is necessary to relieve them of their own
inner blame for the failure of the relationship.

Many manipulators do well in the structured environment
of a court hearing, which is usually easier to control than
real life. They often come across as reasonable and
responsible in their testimony. It is only outside of court
that their facade breaks down. After they have custody of
the kids and are no longer being watched, their show of
caring may be discontinued.

It is important to all of us to have an early-warning
detection system for this kind of evil. How do we
distinguish a smooth and clever manipulator from someone who
is genuine? How should judges detect them, and what sort of
questions should attorneys ask them on cross-examination?

A lie detector would be helpful. Ideally, you would want to
hook the person up, start asking them questions and see when
they squirm. As mentioned in Evil
Explained, the person's evasive reactions to the test
itself may be more important than the read-out from the
machine. Although most of his testimony may be based
loosely on the truth, there are parts that he knows are
lies, and he will resist having those questions asked.

Unfortunately, a lie detector is not admissible in court and
is not usually available in everyday life, so you have
to come up with your own ad-hoc lie-detection system based
on the tools and information available. If you are a
lawyer, your aim is to ask the question that boxes the
witness into a corner and forces him to reveal himself.

To start, the manipulator is not usually someone of joy,
humor or comfortable reciprocal relations with others. They
rarely smile or laugh, at least convincingly, because their
defenses are too tightly wound to allow any such spontaneous
expression. Of course, the other party in any court
proceeding is probably also not smiling or laughing very
much, but you may be able to engage them. If they are
capable in some way of stepping outside of themselves,
understanding the feelings of others and appreciating the
absurdity of their situation, then they are probably not a
manipulator.

Even without a lie detector, you can still ask the same
questions that you would if they were connected to one. If
a party's position is basically a lie, then the more
questions you ask, the more inconsistencies you will find.
If you home in on these inconsistencies and continue to ask
about them, then the witness is eventually going to make
mistakes and show you more of what they are really made of.

Some of the best fictional manipulators were those found on
the TV series Columbo. Each week, some celebrity
would commit the seemingly perfect crime, covering all his
tracks and adjusting his behavior for all the factors that
he could think of at the time. Ol' Columbo, however,
would home in on some minor inconsistency and use it to pry
out the truth.

"One more thing, sir..." he would say.

If we get seduced by a manipulator and end up doing his
will, it is usually because we failed to ask the obvious
questions and follow up on the inconsistencies that we knew
were there. Perhaps the other person got angry or created
some other smokescreen, and we backed off. Or maybe we
projected onto them what we wanted to believe, so they
didn't have to answer any questions at all.

Even the most talented actor can't control everything. For
every lie, there is going to be factual loose ends and
emotional "leakage"—places where a person's real intent
intrudes into his act. A theatrical role, no matter how well
acted, has only one or two dimensions, while someone's real
personality is multidimensional and can't be hidden for
long.

Typically, Columbo would set up some little charade or
experiment, and the other guy would fall for it. Every lie
generates a lot of resulting effects, and the initial
scheme can never take them all into account. The typical
ruse involved Columbo pointing out some inconsistency to the
killer. The killer would then try to correct it, but by
doing so he revealed his true intent and his knowledge of the
crime, and an arrest could then be made.

The actual detection, however, took place well before this,
when Colombo picked up on some minor inconsistency early in
the case. There was nothing magical about Columbo's methods.
It was all about being polite but also being a little
irritating and not letting the other guy control the
interrogation. Columbo knew that you can trip up any
manipulator by being dogged and following up on every
inconsistency with a question.